BUT WE'VE GONE TO THE MOON!?

[Beagler]

My mother (trained as a medical doctor between the Wars) was told the most profitable specialisation was skin diseases as the patients were desperate for treatment and never got better. (she actually went into obs & gynae, which is also pretty persistent, people will keep having babies!) So there is nothing new about looking for the money.
By the way, is there any mileage in waiting for non-invasive blood glucose monitoring? The ear-clip thingie??

 

[dougle34]

It like all medical problems if they make a big break through and cure it pharmaceutical companies will louse a fortune and there would be nothing I it for them to cure illness and sickness

 

[suhasini]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...diabetic-Drug-BGR-34/articleshow/53465596.cms

This link is to an article that raised hope for a type2 drug without side effects. But no word about it again since the announcement in July 2016. Frustrating!

Whether it is dandruff, weight management, common cold ,diabetes....and the list goes on,we are nowhere near understanding them totally let alone finding a cure.Ever since I became type 2 two years ago along with hyper tension ,thyroid and cholesterol [I call it the' bouquet'] I have been on the net researching enough to write my own thesis I guess!

 

[Nuck]

I asked my diabetic specialist about a cure. He laughed and suggested the funds are being used to identify why we get type 1 and not the cure. They are looking at siblings without diabetes and why Their children statistically have more chance of getting type 1 than the child of the diabetic. I was really lifted by that. I flippantly said that rats that get cured in the lab were lucky he said we are a long way from rats.

 

[Nuck]

I became a type 1 diabetic in January 1959 after a bout of Asian flu. My mother told the consultant that her mother became a diabetic after suffering from flu and she believed this had caused me to develop the disease. (My maternal grandmother died from diabetes in 1924.) The consultant told her that her theory was rubbish but statistics show that after a flu epidemic more people are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes so there has to be a connection.
Of course the pharmaceutical industry won't be willing to spend millions on finding a cure. They make their millions out of this disease/condition. However, universities such as Imperial College and UCL are working on this and maybe one day they will hit the jackpot but I somehow doubt it. After all if part of the pancreas has been destroyed how can you rejuvenate it?
I am grateful that managing diabetes is so much easier today than it was in the 1960s. Having had this condition for nearly 60 years it is part and parcel of my life. Being widowed I live alone and have to care for myself. I am rarely ill so I must be doing something right!

If you contracted it due to an autoamune response then it was your strong immune system that killed off the beta cells. I too seem not to get ill like my friends.

 

[steve_p6]

Getting to the moon was easy, getting to Mars is relatively easy. Getting back, a bit like a T1 cure, is the hard bit!

That said I expect we will see a T1 cure before the massed ranks of the global food industry face up to consequences of processed carbs and the low fat mantra!

 

[steve_p6]

If you contracted it due to an autoamune response then it was your strong immune system that killed off the beta cells. I too seem not to get ill like my friends.

You may well have a point there, T1 38 yrs and maybe only laid low by a bug once or twice in all that time.

 

[VictorVillalobos]

Likewise, the headlines are amazing - and then slightly anti-climatic towards the end of the article. But then, the headline has done it's job properly hasn't it...?

I think an organisation made up exclusively of diabetics (with adequate knowledge of the existing orginisations) would find a cure quicker

My friend, it seems we are quite tuned in! THAT organization is in formation.

On November 14, I just started a project for diabetes remission, lead by researchers with diabetes. At the moment I am looking for more researchers with diabetes. PLEASE FORGIVE THAT the webpage for now focuses on t2dm. I am looking for an appropriate definition of t1dm remission or at least "remission ready" t1dm. T1 is to be included.

If anyone out there is interested, please send a contact here:

www.diabetesremission.org/contact

I am aiming for an algorithm that systematically tries to solve the physiological problems behind diabetes. Not "to treat" but to solve them.
That is more freaking doable than the algorithms for driverless cars or defeating the chess champion.

Warning: it will not be a "do it yourself". It will be for a patient/physician team. We cannot afford to do anything risky in the only body we each of us have.

Who joins in this effort?

 

[chris20m0]

This is my first time post to this site. I saw the subject and thought I should like to comment. We have the technology to go to the moon and come back to earth, we have technology to send robots to Mars.

I also know we have technology that can measure your blood glucose, ie various CGMs models, we have technology that can give us insulin, (insulin Pumps) and if these 2 things are programmed correctly with algorithms then we have an artificial pancreas. What I understand is not quite right at the moment and they are working on it is the glucagen component for hypos. Its not safe to release to the masses. We may also need insulin to work faster (ie not wait 1hr to peak and still in your system in 4hrs).

Imagine if they developed the perfect device that could do all the above (it would be similar to the mobile phone or the fitness bands (that measure heart rate, steps, sleep) development. lots of money is made with that new device models come out every so often etc). There is a lot of money to be made out of diabetics. Its not a complete cure but its almost like being normal because you wouldn't have to count carbs, you wouldn't need to worry about how much insulin you need. The computer program would work it all out for you. As a type one diabetic I would be happy for a device that did all this for me that wasn't too evasive. I would actually be happy just to wear a CGM and my iphone(or special device) to tell me hey you blood sugar is at x you need to inject y units of your novorapid.

Its small steps that lead to the big developments. I remember the first mobile phones were heavy and bulky. I think in the next 2-3 years something great is going to happen that will take away a lot of the frustrations of managing diabetes. And the persons or company that puts all the technology together is going to make a lot of money. It can't be that far away since all the components are there its just no one has tried to put it all together in the perfect device.

 

[azure]

I'm not sure I'd trust the algorithms nor the tech, to be honest. I'd rather have a proper cure.

We do have CGMs now but as most people have to pay for them themselves and many cant afford to, I think some high tech 'cure' would take years and years to be widely available, if at all.

 

[MikeTurin]

Only a bit of the moon landing.

We have a bit lost the technology needed to send people to the moon and back. People that welded the Saturn V rockets are nowadays retired and the US manufacturing complex was slaughtered in the name of neo-liberist theories and fatter pay checks of C-level executives and finance firms.

Medicine isn't an exact science, so finding a general cure for an illness is difficult because everyone is different and every illness isn't the same.
100 years ago a type 1 diabetes was a sure death sentence, with the discover of insulin the situation changed dramatically.
I don't think that a simple pill will cure diabetes, but it's possible that the improvement will make the condition less and less problematic, if well followed.

If it's found what triggers the autoimmune response that onsets the T1 and if a screening, monitoring and education on what causes the onset of insulin resistance and then T2 diabetes is possible to prevent the illness.

Unfortunately from what happened to me and from what I read on this and other forums, the prevention side and the helping of the newly diagnosed is so low, we don't have a technological or scientific problem to resolve.
We have a social and health management problem, that it could be solved with the actual technology, but seem that nobody has the willingness to take that route.

 

[milesrf]

At another forum where I am a member, we have a team crunching numbers for the World Community Grid, it has been mostly cancer research looking for a cure. There are other serious diseases that we process as well ranging from Aids to Zika.

In the length of time I have been doing this I have never seen any diabetes data offered . Surely there must be diabetes researchers out there that could use a lot of the computer power that is freely available from home users.

Edit: Perhaps @Administrator or other staff might be able to throw some light on this.

I've been looking for a BOINC project aimed at diabetes for years. The closest I ever found was aimed at finding the genetic causes for various conditions, including diabetes, and now appears to have shut down.

I did find one that offered to add another condition to their research (GPUGRID), with that other condition to be chosen by whoever donates the most to a fund for supporting one more researcher for one year. I forget whether it was $50000 or 50000 euros they needed for this; so far not enough donations to start with this extra condition. They require a rather high-end Nvidia-based graphics card to do much as a volunteer there.

I'm now trying to learn enough of certain types of programming (BOINC, C, C++, Fortran, CUDA, and OpenCL) that I can help write a suitable BOINC project application program, if I find a diabetes researcher who gives me details on just what that program should do and how to do it.

 

[milesrf]

If you contracted it due to an autoamune response then it was your strong immune system that killed off the beta cells. I too seem not to get ill like my friends.

I've read of a Dr. Faustman at the Massachusetts General Hospital who is researching the possibility of distracting strong immune systems with the BCG vaccine to allow any remaining stem cells in the pancreas to produce more beta cells. The last I knew, it had been reported as tried on three type 1 patients. One was able to stop taking insulin for several months. Another was able to reduce the amount of insulin for several months. No effects reported for the third. Still seeking funding for trials on more patients.

 

[milesrf]

A site trying to keep track of all the research that seems possible to lead to a type 1 diabetes cure:

Joshua Levy
http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com

 

[Deleted member 308541]

@milesrf It needs the researcher / s to be able to spit the data they need crunched in to small chunks so that it can be downloaded as work units also.

Perhaps if we are lucky someone may see this thread and act on it with WGC and BOINC.

 

[Les.balL]

Its obvious. Certain people make millions out of not developing a cure. Pfizer have been in the drug development business from the time of WW2. It costs a lot less to develop medications for people than machines to carry us into outer space. And yet- no cures.

 

[simonfholt]

It's 40 of years since I started as a Type 1 diabetic and I remember saying there'd be a cure for this disease in 10 years!

But it's getting closer with human tests being undertaken by Viacyte. There's a video from their chief Exec which looks promising.

Don't give up hope and of course pumps have been a major step forward (if not a cure).

I'm still positive... simon

 

[nickm]

I have forwarded ample evidence of how incompetent and dishonest some publicly employed medical researchers are to the Health minister and other relevant bodies. No response. Of course I can't make that evidence public.
Do not give money to medical research until the corruption in medical academia is dealt with, and the calls by the BMJ and others for data transparency are heeded.

 

[ickihun]

Your best opportunity would be to wait until our PM needs a cure. Wait a minute! We have.
Lets put pressure on her to get this one in the bag. Cure type 1 and type2s cure will follow.
Whose any good at starting a petition?

 

[ladybird64]

I have forwarded ample evidence of how incompetent and dishonest some publicly employed medical researchers are to the Health minister and other relevant bodies. No response. Of course I can't make that evidence public.
Do not give money to medical research until the corruption in medical academia is dealt with, and the calls by the BMJ and others for data transparency are heeded.

This is something that's been on my mind recently - off the diabetes topic for a second.
Just a few years ago, there were adverts everywhere stating that 1 in 3 people would be affected, directly or indirectly, by cancer. Now we are told that 1 in 2 of us will get the illness. Masses of money is directed towards research and treatment but I can't help but wonder why the statistics have changed so drastically, and why there appears to be no explanation?